


Parent-Teacher Night

by shieldivarius



Series: Phil Coulson: High School Principal [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Ultimate Spider-Man (Cartoon)
Genre: Crossover, Established Relationship, Fluff, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 12:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/shieldivarius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knowing what school Phil was working at meant it was easy enough to drive by every once in a while. Driving by every once in a while meant reading the bulletin out front.</p><p>And that was how Clint had learned about parent-teacher night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parent-Teacher Night

**Author's Note:**

> This story is not meant to tie-in with the episode where Coulson goes on a date with Aunt May and they mention it's parent-teacher night! It's completely separate.

“You’re up to something,” Natasha said. Clint looked over at her, could just make out her frown in the dark interior of the car. She looked away, back out the window, when they reached the sun on the other end of the underpass. The fact that she’d let him see that frown, though, that was enough. Natasha had no idea where they were going, or why, and she was suspicious but content to go along with it. Clint could deal with that. In fact, he’d been counting on it.

“I had a great idea.”

She made a doubtful noise. “Your great idea, so far, is driving into Manhattan at rush hour.”

Okay, yes, she had a point. But she still had no idea where they were going, and since she could side-eye him and read his mind most of the time, he counted that as a win.

“You can buy dinner, since you’re being secretive and evasive.”

“Was that a complement on my spy skills?” he asked.

She snorted. “I know you’re up to something, darling. That’s an insult to your skills.”

He shrugged. “But you _still_ don’t know where we’re going,” he said, moving into the left-hand turn lane.

“Midtown High,” she said at once, with a glance out the window. “Idea just got worse, Barton.”

He pressed his lips together and then grinned to stop his jaw from dropping.

“If you’d been thinking, you’ve have taken us north out of Brooklyn and come south. That would have thrown me off more than taking the most direct route in.”

“Show off. How long have you known?”

She smiled at him. It was answer enough. At least his gloating about getting one up on her had only been internal. 

“Did you plan this out with Phil?” she asked then.

Clint shook his head, cringing inwardly at her tone. The idea was to surprise Phil, showing up at the school; see him in his element, as it were, and maybe have a little bit of fun with the persona of Principal Coulson instead of Agent Coulson.

“Clint,” Natasha bit off the ‘t’ at the end. “Turn the car around and take us home. I’m not being part of your plan to get Phil into trouble.”

“We won’t get him in trouble! I’ve thought it out, Nat. We go in, pretend you’ve got a kid sister in the school and we’re her guardians. You know, since no one will ever buy that you’re old enough to have a kid in high school.”

“And why are we there?” she asked patiently. Patiently waiting for him to screw his story up, probably.

“It’s parent-teacher night! As her guardians, it’s our job to show up.”

Natasha let out a long sigh. “It’s on your head when Fury finds out.”

 

 _Really_ , Clint knew she had every right to have all of the blame for this plan pinned on him in the event it backfired or Fury found out (only the latter being likely, because what could possibly go wrong other than that?) But if she’d actually known what he was up to the whole time, she _could_ have put a stop to it. And she hadn’t. So, yes, they were showing a blatant disregard for the rules and Phil’s undercover work, but at least they were going to go down together.

Parent-teacher night, though, really did make a good opportunity for them to pay Phil a visit. 

Clint fully intended on letting Natasha do all the talking, at least in anyone else’s earshot. He didn’t think he could pull off the story he’d spun for her, but as far as identities Nat had taken on went, this one was tame. And it would be hilarious.

“How often do you drive by the school?” Natasha asked as they drove up to it. The lot was clogged with cars. He pulled up onto the lawn and threw it into park after one lap around didn’t reveal any empty spots. They both ignored the woman glaring at them as they got out of the car.

“Who said I—”

“ _Now_ you’re going to deny it?”

“Not as often as you think. They’ve been advertising parent-teacher night for a couple weeks” he said, and if he sounded a little defensive, it was because he was.

“And you’ve been planning this for weeks, or it was some last-minute harebrained idea?”

“I’m offended, Tash. This is a great idea.”

He slid his arm around her waist. She gave a pointed look to the arm before meeting his eyes. He squeezed her against him and grinned instead of letting go.

“We probably were supposed to have an appointment.”

“Sign says open house!”

Natasha sighed, defeated, and leaned into him. “So where _is_ my sister?”

 

The sister story would hold up because none of the parents expressed more than cursory interest in anyone else unless they were interested in _their_ children. They didn’t have to talk to any teachers since she didn’t actually exist to be enrolled in any classes. And if anyone asked (no one did), she wasn’t with them because she was having issues adjusting to being looked after by her older sister and her boyfriend and therefore spent as much time away from them as possible.

It made for a good, solid story. Natasha had filled the details in smoothly once she realised he hadn’t bothered thinking _quite_ that deeply into it.

“That’s the principal’s office down there,” Natasha said with a nod toward a door at the end of the next hallway. 

The school was a big, confused warren of corridors that didn’t make much logical sense. No wonder S.H.I.E.L.D. felt comfortable with having its assets in civilian roles within it. It would have been easy to put in the sort of reinforcements to security Phil had mentioned, and the building did a lot of the security work itself.

“Busy,” he remarked. Four or five teenagers stood loitering outside of the office, apparently arguing. The office door sat shut.

“Did you expect otherwise?” Natasha asked. “He’s the principal. We’ll probably have to wait in line.” 

Clint cleared his throat to keep from laughing at the image of parents of teenagers going to Phil with their problems. “Don’t we get special line-jumping privileges?”

“No, darling, because you didn’t find out if we needed an appointment.” They reached the teenagers, and Natasha smiled. “This is Principal Coulson’s office?” she asked. One of them, a widely built black boy who looked vaguely, naggingly familiar to Clint, nodded.

“Do you know if he’s busy?” Clint asked. The frosted glass of the door meant they couldn’t see inside, and he couldn’t near voice either, which meant the room might be soundproof. And if the room was soundproof, then he had plans for it. Nat and Phil might take a little bit of convincing, but who could say ‘no’ to a naughty desk quickie?

“Yeah,” said the teenage girl standing with her back against the wall next to the door. She held a book open in her hands, was giving him and Natasha an oddly analytical look. “But he’s supposed to be meeting people in the gym, whenever he’s done here. You can meet with him there. It’s down this hall and then two rights.”

“We can wait here for him,” Natasha said. A flash of annoyance crossed the teenager’s face. 

“He asked us to send everyone there who asked,” she said.

Who the hell was he meeting with, to take him away from… whatever his other responsibilities here were? One of the kid heroes, maybe.

“The gym is probably crowded and we’d rather not miss him,” Natasha said. She tugged Clint to stand near the wall of the other side of the hallway and leaned her shoulders against it, watching the door. The teenagers huddled together, whispering.

“Are they…?” Clint started. Natasha nodded. 

“Spider-Man is the one missing,” she said. “Probably in the office with Coulson.”

“They don’t recognise us,” Clint said.

“They’ve never met us.”

“They live on the Helicarrier!”

She shushed him.

 

Fifteen minutes of receiving the stink eye from four teenagers later and Phil _finally_ came out of his office, escorting another teenager and wearing an expression Clint thought he only saved for the accountant geeks he had to deal with in budget meetings. His expression did not improve when he spotted Clint and Natasha. If anything, the lines on his face got deeper.

It looked entirely as though Clint had underestimated just how taxing his job was for Phil.

“Has something happened?” Phil asked, looking from them to his watch and back again. That earned them a more interested look from the teenagers. It also put Clint in the awkward position of trying to find a way to say ‘No, we actually broke protocol to come and see you because we missed you,’ diplomatically and without sounding like the most juvenile lover on the planet.

Thank god he had Natasha for diplomacy and evasive language.

“Clint needed help with a couple of B72-Q40s, but they aren’t dire. Can we talk inside?”

Clint had never heard of a B72-Q40, and maybe he wasn’t fantastic with remembering the names of all the forms he was supposed to remember, but he was pretty sure she’d made that one up. He also had Natasha for making up convincing sounding lies on the spot.

“Should we, uhh, know who you guys are?” one of the teenagers asked. They _definitely_ looked more interested now.

“Inside the office, all of you,” Phil said with a frustrated sigh. He stood back to let everyone file in ahead of him, squeezed Clint’s and Natasha’s shoulders as he brought up the rear, despite the annoyed expression he kept plastered on.

Phil shut the door behind them, walked around the group and sat down behind his desk. A spat broke out over the chairs in front of it.

“Hey! I was sitting—” 

“Neither of you need to sit, leave the chairs,” Phil interrupted, his principal voice doing the same thing to Clint as his hard-ass agent voice, even though they were different.

“Natasha. Clint.” Phil pointed to the chairs.

Clint sat. Nat stayed leaning against the wall. Phil smiled at her and sat down in his own chair, leaving the other one empty.

“I didn’t think this was how we were going to do this.”

“Wasn’t in our plans for tonight, either,” Natasha said. 

“No, seriously, who are you? Are we supposed to know?”

“Sam, shut up!”

Phil glanced over his shoulder and out the office windows, then met Clint’s eyes and then Natasha’s. A paranoid gesture. Was he okay?

“Meet Strike Team Delta,” Phil said finally. “Agents Barton and Romanoff are—“

“Fucking _Avengers!_ I _knew_ we should have recognised you!”

“Watch your language, Mr Alexander.”

“Do we get introductions now?” Clint asked. He leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up onto the desk. Phil glared at him and he grinned back.

In an explosion of sound the teens scrambled to start speaking at once, talking over one another until Phil stood up. “Quiet,” he ordered. “I’ll introduce you.” He named off the five of them. Clint recognised the codenames, could picture the kids in their costumes. Each puffed up when they were named, and Clint snorted.

“We’ll set up something for you next time you’re on the Helicarrier,” he said. “Bunch of superpowers, five on two. Think you can take us?”

Phil rolled his eyes.

“Damn straight we can,” Power Man said.

“We’ll see,” Phil interrupted, sounding resigned. “You five, out.”

They filed out, staring back at Clint and Natasha until someone tripped over someone else and they devolved into arguing over who was at fault. With an amused quirk of her lips, Natasha shut the door behind them.

“They argue as much as we do,” she said.

“They get along better than the Avengers, actually,” Phil replied. “They argue, but it’s not taking them as long to get past the idea of presenting as a team instead of a hazardously thrown together group of solo acts.”

“Tell us how you really feel, Phil.”

Natasha laughed, crossed the little room to join them and lifted her hip to sit on the edge of the desk.

“What am I going to do with you two?” Phil asked.

“I can think of a few things,” Natasha murmured. She got a glare for it.

“Neither of you should be here. In fact, I’m supposed to report…”

Natasha leaned across the desk, and Clint could only see the back of her head but he could imagine the flat expression on her face. The huge sigh Phil heaved confirmed it.

“We love you,” Natasha murmured.

“You freaked my team out.”

“C’mon. They loved us,” Clint said.

Phil stood up, bent over and kissed Natasha, then came around and leaned over Clint, trapping him in his chair. Clint passed his tongue across Phil’s bottom lip when they kissed. The other man pulled away with a chiding smile and straightened his suit.

“I have parents to meet with. You two stay here, or go home. Do _not_ wander through the school.” 

“Aww. C’mon, Phil!”

“No,” he said, then left.

Clint deflated, sinking further into the chair. “Now what do we do?”

Natasha swatted his foot, gestured around the room.

“Snoop?” 

They shared a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> http://shieldivarius.tumblr.com


End file.
